وَأَنَّهُ كَانَ يَقُولُ سَفِيهُنَا عَلَى اللَّـهِ شَطَطًا ﴿4﴾ وَأَنَّا ظَنَنَّا أَن لَّن تَقُولَ الْإِنسُ وَالْجِنُّ عَلَى اللَّـهِ كَذِبًا ﴿5﴾
...and that the fools among us used to attribute to Allah extremely wrong things, and that we thought that the humans and the Jinn would never tell a lie about Allah, [ therefore, we had followed them in shirk under this impression ]. (72:5)
The word shatat means 'vile words, extravagant or exorbitant or enormous lies'. The word also means 'to transgress or act wrongfully, unjustly or exceed the legitimate bounds'. The believers from amongst Jinn used to put forward their excuse for being involved in disbelief and idolatry thus: The foolish people from amongst their nation uttered vile slander against Allah, whilst they did not think it possible for a human being or a Jinn to impute a lie to Allah. They were thus far caught up in the foolish people's vile words and committed kufr and shirk, but they had now heard the Qur'an and the reality had later opened up.